Customer Reviews

Venus Beauty Institute [VHS]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A hit back in France, "Venus Beauty Institute" came here in Japan and USA. I am afraid that the film was seeking audience very hard in theater, though. It's a pity because "Venus Beauty" is a really good movie with superb performance. And it is the place where Audrey Tautou (aka Amelie) was working before she landed in a cafe in Paris. THAT makes the film is worth watching, don't you think?

DVD or VHS's cover will show you three workers (how do you say in English?) at a beauty salon, clad in vivid pink, but the film's main story follows Nathalie Baye's character, Angele, now forty-years-old, whose relationships with a man she loved in the past, it is implied, had not been an easy one. The moment she is ditched by a guy after a 3-days love affair, she encounters a new love without her knowing; in fact, you see behind that guy, an artist Antoine (Samuel Le Bihan, seen in "Brotherhood of Wolf") falls in love at first sight. Suddenly she is told that he loves her, and he keeps on coming in spite of her repeated rejection. Should she accept his love, instead of having an easy relations with forgettable dates, knowing that loving means complicated things, as she experienced before....

In the meanwhile, Angele's co-workers have their own relationships, and they are told (or implied) in a very subdued, subtle way. Samantha (played by Mathilde Seinger, younger sister of Emmanuelle of "The Nineth Gate" and Harrison Ford film "Frantic") seems to keep on having dates every night with different boys. Other worker, youngest Marie (lovely Tautou) is courted by an old, kind gentleman who asks her to come to his house. Among these well-drawn characters, you will meet many strange customers coming to the salon, who make you smile, including a totally naked "Madame Buisse"(!) coming to salon wearing ... a overcoat only.

The greatest virtue of "Beauty Venus" is Nathalie Baye's marvellous acting, which convincingly portrays Angele's fragile side of character, who cannot trust herself to anybody anymore. Her insecurity is sometimes very poignantly expressed, but her pain comes very naturally, because always superb Baye never relies on overacting here. That makes a good contrast to Audrey Tautou's innocent love, which is also an impressive part of the film. For all simple, and in a sense too familiar story of the film, "Venus Beauty" is a memorable film that makes you feel good, thanks to its romantic (but not sugary) atomosphere and insightful study of characters.

Using striking blue and pink colors, the director Tonie Marhall creates a small magical world where pains and regrets of ordinary people are not forgotten, but are presented with a delicate overtone. Everything is told in a understated voice, so you might feel the film is too slow-moving or dull at some times, but good performance and realistic feeling of the salon (they really made it on the street) make up for that. I assure you that next time you go to a beauty salon, you will smile remembering those colorful characters of "Venus Beauty Institute."

The film also gives extra fun to French cinema fans. Look for faces of Frederic Andrei (star of "Diva" -- long time no see), Claire Denis (director of "Nenette and Boni" -- Vince Gallo was there, remember?), Philippe Harel (director of "The Banned Woman") and many, many veteran actors. And Tante Maryse (one of Angele's aunts) is Micheline Presle, the director's mother.

This stars Nathalie Baye, not Audrey Tautou, of Amelie (2001) fame. (She has a supporting role.) Baye is Angele, a 40-year-old Parisian beautician who has loved and lost a few too many times. Indeed, as the film opens we (and Samuel Le Bihan as Antoine) watch and hear her being dumped once again. Well, she is careless with men. She is perhaps too "easy." She picks up men, the wrong ones. She is aggressive in her desire. And now she has become cynical. All she wants now are one-nights stands, no more love, no more unbreak my heart. Love is too painful.

So when Antoine falls in love with her at something like first sight (I do have a weakness for love at first sight: it is so, so daring, and so, shall we say, unpredictable) she rejects him out of hand even though he is a vital and handsome artist, confident and winning. What IS her problem? But he pursues her even though he is engaged to another (Helene Fillieres). And when she gets drunk and wants some casual sex with him, he says no. He wants her fully in control of her faculties.

So this is a romantic comedy of sorts centered around a beauty parlor. However any resemblance to Hollywood movies in the same genre (Shampoo (1975) and Hairspray (1988) somehow come to mind) is purely coincidental. Here the salon is brightly and colorfully lit with a tinker bell as the door opens, and the clientele are eclectic to say the least: an exhibitionist who arrives in a raincoat and nothing else; a rich old man lusting after Tautou; a woman with oozing pimples on her...(never mind)...etc.

What makes this work so well is a completely winning performance by Baye, sharp direction by Toni Marshall, and a kind of quirky and blunt realism that eschews all cliche. Tautou fans will be disappointed in her modest part, but she is just adorable in that role. The voyeur scene in which she is willingly seduced by the rich old guy may raise your libido or your envy depending on where you're coming from. Ha!

See this for Nathalie Baye who gives the performance of a lifetime, simultaneously subtle and strong, vulnerable and willful. She makes us identify with her character and she makes us wish her love.

I bought this film to practice my French. I figured it was fluffy, but would prove more interesting than language lab. I was right. However, it not only beats language lab, it is film of great depth--and pleasing to the eye. Nathalie Baye, who plays the lead character Angele in the VENUS BEAUTY INSTITUTE, played the wife to Gerhard Depardieu's husband in THE RETURN OF MARTIN GUERRE. She is not a terribly pretty woman, but like most French women she has a "certain something, I know not what" and is a fine actress. The film is currently being marketed as an early Audrey Tautou film (she plays Marie, the 20-year old beautician who becomes involved with an older man), but Tautou has ninth billing and much less screen time than Baye.

Angele is very unhappy. She apparently has never been able to make a committment to a man. One man with whom she apparently had an earlier serious relationship appears throughout the film (she runs back to him whenever she is wounded), and it seems she may have once loved him, but somehow she shot him in the face.

Angele uses casual sex to deal with her unhappiness. Her tactics frequently led to bad experiences. One day as she is being dumped by her latest jerk, a young man who looks suspiciously like a young relative of Depardieu approaches her and tells her he has fallen in love with her. The rest of the film tells their story--including an ex-fiancee with a gun.

This is a beautiful film. The story is beautiful. The film contains beautiful shot after shot. I am attracted to color and the celadon greens, mango pinks, celestial blues, and others are fabulous colors are to die for (think Jamaica). The interior shots of the beauty institute, the apartments, the homes are filled with color and ambient lighting. Poitiers Cathedral at Christmas and the Christmas lights on the street are lovely.

I've spent a lot of time in salons being waxed, and plucked, and poked, and baked under a hair drier, and I have never seen the salon so well depicted. The characters who receive Angele's ministrations are treated with loving kindness and lots of hot wax and scented oil. This film is so REAL and if it says anything it says that LOVE is where you find it, even if it involves torture.

Tonie Marshall's "The Venus Beauty Institute" could have only been made in France. It is a mature work that is silly, serious, sexy and ultimately sublime in its' treatment of love and relationships. In the film Nathalie Baye plays tough cookie Angele who uses one night stands to survive one lonely night after another. She is the agressor and wants nothing to do with Love. One of the great things about this film is that Angele cruises train stations and fast food joints (only in France does fast food mean lamb shank, baquettes and napoleons!) for sex and it is neither sleazy of pitiful! Just when you start to feel that you know what the story is ...along comes rough and tumble Antoine to upset the cart, both ours and Angele's. Much happens in this film and it's all sexy, racy and done as well as anything I've seen this year. American film makers should be forced to watch this movie. No on second thought...Americans don't have it in them to make films like this. Let's leave it to the French who do this kind of film so well. Viva La France!

Like many people, I saw 'Amelie' and figured "I'll watch - in fact, seek out - anything with Audrey Tautou." There have been some pleasant surprises along that road - 'L'Auberge Espagnole' and 'Dirty Pretty Things' come immediately to mind. There are some bad ones out there, too. I did not enjoy sitting through either 'God is Great, I'm Not' or 'Happenstance.'

Now, with Ms. Tautou's rising international profile, we're seeing a "Tautou-ization" in the marketing of her earlier films. In 'Happenstance,' she's just part of the woodwork, yet stands alone on the VHS/DVD coverbox. In 'Venus Beauty Institute,' it's the same trick pulled on us: the marketers have succeeded in finding the *one* shot in the entire film where she happens to be poised in the center.

Which is a shame, because this is Nathalie Baye's film. 51 (and radiantly beautiful) at the time of filming, Ms. Baye doesn't deserve the short shrift she's getting here. This part was written specifically with her in mind - it's a complex role that very few actresses could do justice to.

US audiences will remember Baye as Leonardo DeCaprio's French-born mother in "Catch Me If You Can." She was also a standout with Sergi Lopez in "An Affair of Love."

My videocassette tells me this film is categorized as a "Romantic Comedy. Hardly. There are elements of humor. Mostly this is about Angèle's (Baye's) humor - the absence of it, along with the spirit and hope that seem to have ebbed out of her life. Can she get it back?

A good story, no fireworks (except a little at the very end), a realistic, thoughtful, beautiful story about a woman who has given up on being in love. Angele was once in love and for some reason that is never explained, she did something, apparently in a passionate rage, that scarred her lover's face severely. She seems to feel overwhelmed by guilt for this, and so she refuses to let herself ever be in love again. She goes from man to man, quick one-night (if that long) stands. One day, a much younger man sitting in a cafe overhears her being dumped and, as he says, "is moved" by her. This story is about how she lets herself fall in love again. I loved it. Subplots of the lives of the other girls that work with her at the Venus Beaute Institut round out the story wonderfully. It's not like the typical American romantic/comedy movie, it's much more subtle, much more realistic, much more tender. If you love Meg Ryan type movies, all cuteness and (to me, boring and predictable) smart aleck wise cracks, you might not like this. But then again, you might.

This is one of my favorite movies ever. It is very therapeutic to watch. There are many layers to this film...I've seen it a hundred times and each time I see something new.

This film is really about love, and particularly women's search for love. It seems all the other characters in the film revolve around the main character Angele, to illustrate some point about love, men, and women, and relationships, and emotions. Angele is 40 years old and very unhappy. She feels that love is too painful to embrace it fully, for many reasons which are so complicated to mention...being sexually abused as a child, being orphaned at 8 years old by her parents' tragic deaths, and guilt over some action she has committed in the past are some of the reasons.

Underneath everything I think this film is trying to express our longing to be truly, truly loved. Throughout the film we see examples of how men treat women as sex objects, (the two workers carrying the mirror, the guy who comes into the salon looking for the "finishing touches," and of course Angele's loser boyfriend from the first scene, also Angele's travel agent friend who found a record of her husband's affairs.) Women come into the salon seeking beauty treatments that will hopefully turn them into perfect creatures who can finally be loved, or to soothe their painful feelings. We can see that Angele feels so much pain, but gains so much comfort from being able to comfort others at the salon, but doesn't feel she deserves to take care of herself the same way.

Angele is afraid to be in love, because from her own experiences, love only brings pain, not pleasure...as she says, she "opted out" of love, "love, jealousy, and pain...they're finished!" Until one day, someone comes out of nowhere and gives her the unconditional love she needs. He loves her when she is not dressed nicely for dinner, he loves her when she rejects him over and over, he loves her even though she's "screwed up," even when she tells him she slept with another guy he still loves her...and he really understands who she is. In the end, Angele is able to accept love again, but getting to that place is difficult. My favorite line from the film is, "Why always say the opposite of what you feel?" What a good question.

This isn't a bittersweet romance movie. Instead, it's a bittersweet romance-in-the-making. Nathalie Baye shines as the center of a trio of beauticians who struggle to find love. It lacks the warmth of a really dynamic look at love, but it is pretty and sometimes heartwarming.

Angèle (Nathalie Baye) is about forty, and works at a pink, perfumed beauty salon where women and men alike come for skin care, tans and massages. Because of a lover's scarred face, she has sworn off love. Now all she wants are flings and one-night stands, out of fear that her heart will be broken.

But one day she is dumped nastily, and a sculptor named Antoine (Samuel Le Bihan) sees everything. Despite being engaged, he falls in love with Angèle. But the love-wary Angèle pushes him away, and he pursues her even so, determined to break down her defenses and make her see how much he loves her.

Tonie Marshall does a fairly good job with a film that looks at love, beauty, and the bitterness that can keep potential love away. It's definitely a unique story, with a beautiful older woman finding love again, but without age jokes or painless romances. It has false starts, misunderstandings, awkwardness and mistakes -- like love.

Marshall's film does have some flaws, however. Jacques (Jacques Bonnaffe) is Angèle's ex, the guy who has some scarring on his face. They're not particularly bad scars, but the characters act as if he need to wear a half-mask and haunt the Paris Opera House. That superficiality seems reflected in the pretty, shallow look of the salon.

But the love stories are quite sweet, including two younger women, one a tough girl and one a sensitive sweetie. Though Angèle originally sees love as an enslavement, the movie doesn't see it that way. In here, love is an emotion that can change your life -- it's not enslavement, and it's not perfection. But it can bring happiness.

Baye does an excellent job as the embittered Angèle, whose fear of love comes from shooting her ex. She stays on the same level as the young women, who are expected to be single. Backing her up is the tough, depressed Samanthe (Mathilde Seigner), and the sweet naive Marie (Audrey Tautou), who is the mistress of a man old enough to be her dad.

Despite the picture of Tautou in the middle of the cover, this is Baye's movie. And despite the superficial, cold moments here and there, the bittersweet "Venus Beauty Institute" is worth checking out.

The middle aged Angèle (Nathalie Baye) works in a beauty saloon where her manager says that she should be managing her own saloon. However, Angèle is content with what she is and has, or at least so she says. In the evenings Angèle goes to odd places and picks up strangers with whom she has sex. On one occasion when Angèle sits at the train station with one of these men she begins to express her interest in the man beyond sex, but the man in not interested. Antoine, a young artist, overhears the conversation and falls in love with Angèle and he decides to express love his love for her. Angèle resents the love shown by Antoine, and her fear for commitment begins to surface. Venus Beauty Institute is a small and interesting film that presents human interaction and conflict through the lens of insecurity and fear. This is portrayed through the characters and the environment in which they dwell.

I got this movie because it stars Nathalie Baye and expected it to be a light hearted romantic comedy (i.e. a chick flick) based on the cover photo and the text on the back of the case. That will teach me to never judge a book by it's cover. I was VERY pleasantly surprised upon watching it, this film has considerable depth and complexity. The story is about a woman (Nathalie Baye) who works as a beautician and who is looking for love. She was crushed by a previous relationship and now carries many scars. She refuses to emotionally commit herself to another relationship, prefering instead to pursue short lived affairs with no attachments, although deep inside she would like to find someone, even if she won't admit it to herself. Her life changes dramatically when a man comes up to her from out of the blue and expresses his undying love. He is currently engaged to another woman who loves him deeply, but he is so profoundly attracted to Baye's character that he will leave her. This may sound like some bizarre, confused love triangle, but in fact this film is extremely well done. The pacing of the story is perfect, and the complexities of the emotions and the characters are on full display without being melodramatic in any way. There are a few side plots in this film (Audrey Tautou's relationship with an older man), some of which enhance the story and some of which are a pointless distraction (the woman who comes to the salon to tan in the nude). There is a realism in this film (and French films of this genre in general) that is totally lacking in comparable American films. We can feel and sympathize with Nathalie Baye's fear and anguish about committing herself again. This is not Baye's best performance (Le Retour de Martin Guerre), but she is still outstanding, one of the world's best actresses. I would rate this film as 4.5 stars if I could, rounding up to 5. If you are new to French cinema, this would be a great film to start with. If you are a connisseur of French cinema or Nathalie Baye, this is a must have. An (unexpectedly) outstanding film.